“Oscar, do you know what Tristan Dupree was talking about?”
“Don’t like that guy,” Oscar said, placing the pot on the old Wedgewood stove and lighting the burner.
“So you know him?”
Silence. He stared at me with his wide bottle green eyes, doing his best to look innocent. This was another way in which Oscar wasn’t a typical familiar: He only occasionally told me what I wanted to know, or did what I asked him to do. And he was stubborn as all get-out. By now I knew better than to waste my breath trying to get him to tell me something he wasn’t ready to reveal.
“All righty, then,” I said. “Let’s come at this from a different angle: Do you know what Tristan might be looking for? What’s a ‘beeeuuugh,’ or whatever it was he called it?”
He shrugged one bony shoulder. “Beats me. I forgot my Old English. It’s been years since anybody talked that way.” Oscar was something of a linguistic chameleon. He spoke numerous spirit languages, when speaking English favored a lot of teen slang, and now had a tendency to mimic my Texas twang. Or maybe he was making fun of me; it was hard to tell.
“Just how old are you?”
He looked at me askance. “You’re not supposed to ask things like that! Sheesh.”
It was humbling to be taught social niceties by a gobgoyle.
I sneezed.
“Gesundheit. You know what you oughta do for that cold? Find a topaz the color of the sea. Take a boat out to the middle of the bay and—”
“It’s not a cold.”
“Whatever you say.” Oscar shrugged. “How much longer until the mac ’n’ cheese is ready?”
“Soon as the pasta’s done, little guy,” I said, finishing the cheese sauce. “I don’t have time to bake it in the oven like I usually do, so cheese sauce and macaroni mixed together in the pot will have to do. I need to take care of a few things.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Oscar said magnanimously. “Whatcha gotta do that’s so important?”
“I want to take a quick look through my old suitcase, and then I have to go see Aidan.”
“Master Aidan? Why?” Oscar’s huge eyes got impossibly wide.
“He’s not your master anymore, remember?”
“Listen.” He tried to smile, which came across as a grimace, then chuckled, which sounded like a rusty saw. “No need to talk with Maaaiiiister Aidan, no need at all. I know a little Middle English—how about this?”
He launched himself off the counter, landed lightly on the kitchen floor, and began reciting a poem, complete with sweeping gestures of his surprisingly graceful oversized hands:
WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth—
“Stop that Oscar! Stop it at once!” I said, alarmed. “Is that . . . are you casting a spell?”
He blinked, one arm still held aloft, frozen in a dramatic pose. “What are you talkin’ about? You know my kind don’t cast spells.”
“Then . . . what are you doing?”
“Duh.” He rolled his eyes.
“Duh what?” I said, impatient now.
“I’m reciting the prelude from The Canterbury Tales.” Oscar’s tone suggested this was the most obvious thing in the world. When I didn’t react, he added, “Hello, Geoffrey Chaucer? Ring a bell?”
“Um . . . sort of,” I mumbled.
“I know you didn’t finish high school, mistress, but you did go for a couple of years, right? I thought they made kids memorize and recite that in English class.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was sort of . . . absent. A lot. So, okay, I’m not up to speed on Chaucer. The point is, why are you reciting one of his poems?”
“’S not poetry, exactly. More like a prose poem, I guess. It’s written in rhyming couplets—”
“Okay, sorry. My fault for asking the wrong question.” Oscar was a stickler for precise language. “Let’s focus. What is Tristan Dupree looking for? You’re saying he used an Old English word?”
He rolled his eyes.
“By that very rude gesture I’m going to assume you mean, ‘Yes, mistress.’”
I decided to pursue this line of questioning later, when he might be more forthcoming. Hunger made Oscar a mite testy. No two ways about it, Oscar and I had a nontraditional witch-and-familiar relationship.
I drained the cooked pasta and poured it into a bowl, mixed in the cheese sauce, and grated some Parmesan over the top. Not a gourmet version of mac ’n’ cheese, but better than the premade stuff from a box. I set the steaming bowl on the kitchen table. “Serve yourself. There’s also a pizza in the freezer if you get hungry later. Unless you want to come with me to visit Aidan?”
“I . . . uh . . .” He picked at his talons.
As nervous as Aidan made me, he had a much stronger effect on my familiar. Oscar had been bound to Aidan for a very long time, until I freed him by stealing back his wings. The wings themselves had been destroyed in the process, but at least Oscar now had his freedom. Ever since, though, whenever Oscar was around “Master Aidan,” he was alternately obsequious, giddy, and nervous as all get-out.
“Tell you what: You eat your dinner while I look for something. Let me know what you decide in a few minutes, okay?”
I went into the bedroom, closed the door behind me, and headed to the closet. At the very back, behind the clothes hanging on the rod, sat an old suitcase I had lugged around the world with me but hadn’t opened since arriving in San Francisco. It was nothing like today’s luggage; heavy and hard-backed, it was a mottled jade green, a 1960s-era suitcase as vintage as any of the clothes in my shop. My mother had called it her “special valise” when she helped me pack it to move in with Graciela, all those years ago. I stared at it for a moment, reminding myself to breathe, before dragging it out of the closet and hoisting it onto the bed.
I had never really blamed my mother for sending me away when I was eight. Children with supernatural powers can be a challenge to raise. I had recently become an unofficial “big sister” to a powerful young witch named Selena, who, despite my own powers, kept me on my toes. My mother, in comparison, was a simple small-town woman overwhelmed with life in general, never mind her magical misfit of a daughter.
But lately I had started wondering. Every once in a while Bronwyn’s grandchildren would come hang out at the shop, or customers would wander in with their kids. Seeing children who were about the age I’d been when I left my home made me realize just how young I had been. How vulnerable. How in need of guidance and love and nurturing.
Of course, it wasn’t as if my mother had put me out on the street, I reminded myself. She had sent me to live with Graciela, a woman who loved me unconditionally and had the strength and knowledge to handle my talents while helping me to understand them.
Still . . . now that I had made my home in San Francisco and had made friends—good friends, who felt more like family—I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t so bad, after all. Yes, I was different, but I wasn’t wicked and I wasn’t a freak. I was a person as deserving of love as any other.
All of a sudden I flashed on a memory of the drive-the-demons-out-of-her ritual I had been subjected to when I was seventeen, and felt a surge of anger toward Margarita Ann Velasquez Ivory. My mother.
Well, I thought. This reunion was going to be interesting. Clearly, I had a lot to say to the mother of the bride.